Gerbil!

I had my final (thank God!) day of nursing orientation today. I realize it's very hard to make any sort of required orientation entertaining, but by the time I got off work today, I felt as though all will to do anything had been sucked out of me.

One nice thing about working the floor is that being on my feet and moving for eight hours generally rocks Shirley to sleep. Unfortunately, sitting still for six to eight hours each day this week during orientation keeps her awake. And when she's awake, she likes to kick my internal organs.

This has caused me to realize something: I have the bladder capacity of a gerbil. Between the fact that Shirley takes up a surprising amount of space in my abdomen (leaving me with the uncomfortable realization that I have enough room for her, a full stomach, or a full bladder, but certainly not all three at the same time) and her regular karate kicks to my bladder, I had to go pee every hour and a half!

Every so often I start to wonder if catheters are really as uncomfortable as the patients claim. Sometimes, I think they'd be really convenient...